My history teacher says “geography is destiny” and made us watch guns germs and steel. I think bad empanada said this narrative promotes a lack of remorse for colonization because it’s characterized as inevitable. He didn’t explain why it was wrong though iirc. My teacher (who likes orwell) says it’s just material conditions. It could be argued that geography is created the original conditions that led to class society before class forced largely took over, though this could be taken to the extent of class being secondary. Anyone know about this?
One thing to consider is the Eurocentrism of what it means to be "advanced" in these contexts. When Europeans invaded and colonized the Americas, yes they had many material advantages, but something key to consider is the cultures and humanity and decisions made and how they differed between cultures in Europe and the Americas. Europeans were vicious and condescending, rapidly transitioning from curiosity and trade to plunder and murder and ethnic cleansing. The fate of the indigenous people of Hispaniola, for example. In contrast, there were rich cultures across the Americas with wide diversities of thought and philosophies, none of which compared to the barbarity of Europeans (even the supporters of regional empires in the Americas couldn't hold a candle to the salting of the earth depravity of Euros).
I'm pointing at all of this because the common Euro narratives are imbued with a social darwinism that conflates conquering and violence with success and superiority. They then go a step farther to absolve themselves of blame for developing cultures so barbaric, pointing at things like you mentioned, including geography. While on one hand material conditions are extremely important and explain a lot, they should not allow us to cease a political or philosophical or cultural critique, nor to accept simplistic and vulgar analysis of material explanations. The colonial mindset that genocided continents persists in its evolved form of imperialism of the US-led capitalist order.
The barbarity of Euro colonizer cultures lingers, which is a reason they avoid drawing attention to the continuity of capitalism and ethnic cleansing over these hundreds of years. They'd be forced to take a position against empire, to make statements that suggest a need to change the current order. Instead, they safely leave the material in the past, implicitly supporting the status quo.
The argument that is sometimes made is that the only real signifier of how advanced a civilization is, is their ability to destroy or subjugate everyone else. This view holds that any other kind of societal advancement is not real because it can be nullified by someone with more military power. It doesn't matter how great your architecture is, how efficient your irrigation, how egalitarian your socio-political system, or how pretty your art is because all of that can be wiped out by a more powerful invader. Unless you can defend your advancements, they may as well not have existed at all. And it is usually implied that the only way to defend your own civilization is by destroying or subjugating all the others around you, because if you don't do it to them they will eventually do it to you. The same people that hold this view usually also believe that all real societal progress is a byproduct of advancements in military prowess.
Unfortunately i don't think you can really reason with people who think like this, they just have a radically different set of fundamental values that is incompatible with our views on society.
Radically different is right! I've heard this argument before. I may even have been persuaded by it until I was about 20. But jfc does it not sound like the most backwards society imaginable? So advanced that it isn't capable of making technological advances on its own. And when we add class back in to see that the ruling classes orchestrating all this are applying the same principles of theft and brutality to the working classes in order to advance militarily or even have a military. Did anyone say parasite?